Archive for the Category »music «
I like music. I’ve always liked music; all kinds of music. In days gone by, I would spend my spare cash on buying vinyl or things to play it on.
When CDs arrived on the scene, I switched to the new medium and the vinyl was assigned to the loft. I even re-bought some of my old vinyl on CD (you’re welcome guys – double-whammy for you).
When downloads came into play (jeez this makes me sound old) I still continued to buy CDs, because some strange part of me still liked having something solid and tangible in my hand after parting with my cash.
When I finally took the plunge and bought a few individual tracks from iTunes, to fill some gaps on my iPod, all seemed fine. Until I decided to move some of my music onto a little stick MP3 player and I happened upon the problem with Digital Rights Management.
The iTunes-purchased tracks wouldn’t play on my stick drive because it was in iTunes format, not standard MP3…
I am delighted to let any of my regular readers know that The Rudies, that fabulous ska/reggae band from Lexington, Kentucky have a new CD out.
If you have no idea what I’m talking about, check this post out first.
How do I know they have a new CD out, well I have had a flurry of new mySpace ‘friends notifications. In the last 3-4 days, I’ve had about 30 eMail notifications from mySpace.
I can’t say I’m a big fan of the Reggae/Ska genre. I can take it or leave it to be honest, but I do feel a bit of an affinity with my namesake and his pals in Kentucky, so props to the Rudies and all their friends!
You want to see their myspace page?
I was on a training course today and, off topic, was chatting to the trainer. He was telling me he was at the Scottish Fashion Awards ‘do at the weekend because his pal was one of the organisers.
I thought that all sounded all fine and well, until he told me who was sitting at his table. To have Clare Grogan sitting there would probably have been interesting enough; she’d be a good laugh, but he also had Siouxsie Sioux there too. Apparently she was dressed in a tight green catsuit and full Siouxsie makeup. Class.
Oh yes! This is what eBay is all about. You remember something from the past, you have a look on eBay, place a speculative bid and lo and behold you win it. Then the anticipation as you wait for it to arrive, with a little bit of doubt creeping in as you wonder if will be as good as you remember it. Will the mists of time cloud your perspective and will it turn out to be really rubbish?
Late last week, after a conversation in work, I placed exactly such a speculative bid, won it at a rock bottom price and it arrived yesterday. I had kind-of half-forgotten about it, what with all that’s going on elsewhere just now, so it was a pleasant surprise to see the packet drop through the door.
The decision by YouTube to remove music videos on Friday (13/03/2009) will have knock on effect to the Manic Solutions blog. The Desert Island C90 post will likely have a number of broken embedded videos.
After all that work too — bah.
Since purchasing my new domain names, I started to get some strange eMails, addressed to one of the domains; the stevemccallum.com one. I was regularly getting 4-5 per day and they all had a few things in common that ruled them out from being common or garden spam.
i) They were all addressed to ‘me’ at my domain, ii) They were exclusively new ‘friends’ on MySpace and iii) the majority seemed to have ska/rudeboy/grrl oriented names or pages on MySpace, the latest of which being Lynval Golding of the Specials and Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry.
This year’s end of year challenge from Scott was to compile a Desert Island C90 tape. I was always a big fan of the cassette tape back in the day, but alas they are long gone from my house now, with the advent of CD’s and such.
Still, I was keen to make an entry this year, having run out of time last year for his Amazon challenge. And, glad to say, I made it, with a few hours to spare on Hogmanay. Now, with a little bit more time on my hands, I can add some commentary on the choices I made and link in some vids for those that may be interested to see.